Donkey Kong Country Returns, but it's not as welcome as I had hoped - A Review

Back in the SNES days, the three Donkey Kong Country games were pure gold. If there is a gamer out there from that generation who somehow missed out on all of them, I am frankly shocked. Even many of my non-gamer friends can relate dear childhood memories stemming from one or more of the original Donkey Kong Country games.

Fast-forward to E3 2010, when Donkey Kong Country Returns was announced for Wii. I would bet I wasn't the only gamer who became ecstatic over the shiny trailer Nintendo had prepared. However, after finally beating the game, I must say it failed to deliver in more than one way. Read on to find out why.

Donkey Kong Country Returns adopts the simple Wii remote-turned-sideways control scheme that has come to be easily recognized in the Wii's rather extensive library of platform game revivals. As fans of the genre have come to expect, this works just fine, even in the more challenging levels of DKCR.

What I'm not so happy with are the levels themselves. Platforming is a precise art. However, it feels clumsy and imprecise in DKCR due to an abundance of uncertain jumps and a sluggish feel to Donkey Kong's movement. A feeling of inconsistency persists throughout. I admire and praise the fact that each of the game's levels offers something different than the last. But in this way, the game often throws unpredictable and unfair obstacles into the player's face, causing many levels to be an exercise in frustration. Where vine-swinging, barrel-hopping, and mine cart-riding were all extremely fun in the original Donkey Kong Country, the charm has disappeared in Returns.

Speaking of charm, the music in Returns doesn't capture the trait nearly as well as its SNES counterparts. With so much inspiration readily available, one has to wonder how the music in Returns falls so flat.

The worlds in DKCR are pretty generic, particularly the last one. I compare the worlds in Returns to the worlds in Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, which I see as being the golden standard in geographic variety. Part of the Donky Kong Country charm comes from the offbeat and often outlandish worlds, like the carnival, haunted, and beehive settings in DKC2. I think Returns missed the mark in that regard.

Though I don't put much weight on a game's visuals, I have to admit I was very impressed with the graphics in DKCR. My admiration only goes so far, however: unnecessary clutter on the game screen often detracts from gameplay in DKCR. While playing, I was frequently left puzzling over where safe platforms were or why I just fell into that bottomless pit because it didn't have the safe platform it seemed to.

There was a definite charm to the short little cut scenes scattered about in DKCR. That's about the only redeeming quality I could pick out in the whole experience. And, as you may have already guessed, it wasn't enough to fully redeem the game.

Conclusion
After devoting so much time to Donkey Kong Country Returns, I wondered whether the original DKC games were actually as good as I seemed to recall. Imagine my surprise when I played the original and it was actually fun! On the surface, DKCR has everything that the original has: vines, mine carts, rhinos, barrels, and the like. What it lacks, on the other hand, is the same spirit and charm. The platforming gameplay, the music, and the settings all drag this game down to what I would call mediocrity, to be perfectly frank.